Social Services Under Strain

Broward County is not alone in its struggle to house and care for abused and neglected children.

Across Florida, a near-record number of children being removed from their families is straining an overburdened system.

In Palm Beach County, shelters are full, and officials are squeezing in beds wherever they have room.

In Miami-Dade County, almost half of the foster homes have more children than their state licenses allow.

Social services administrators attribute the increase to a new law that emphasizes child safety over family preservation, and media attention on child abuse.

Another factor beginning to emerge is welfare reform.

In Miami-Dade, 15 families formerly on welfare have been referred to the Department of Children & Families for child neglect, said Anita Bock, head of the agency in Miami-Dade and Monroe counties.

"Some of the families we've been taking in in the last two months have as a root cause poverty and the loss of welfare] benefits," Bock said.

Social services officials in Broward and Palm Beach counties are not specifically tracking the connection between welfare reform and child abuse and neglect. But they say some cases may be related.

In Palm Beach County, about 10 children have been abandoned, some dropped off at state social services offices, said Amy Elofson of Boys Town of South Florida.

In Broward, almost half of the parents whose children have been taken by the state are or were on welfare, said Bob Ritz, deputy administrator of Children & Families in the county.

"That seems like an awful lot," he said.

Statewide, the number of children removed from their families and placed into shelters and foster homes has steadily climbed for about a year.

The increase began last fall after five Florida children died from abuse in one week. Historically, reports of abuse and neglect rise after high-profile child deaths.

Officials expected the reports to trail off after several weeks but they never did. One reason may be a philosophical swing back to child protection.

In the 1980s, state social services workers aggressively pursued child abuse cases and earned a reputation as witch-hunters among parents who claimed they were falsely accused or unfairly treated.

In the early 1990s, the focus switched to keeping families together when possible. But that approach has increasingly come under attack as more and more children have been hurt or killed because the state failed to act.

Last week, police in Central Florida arrested a father and charged him with beating his 6-year-old daughter to death. Three times this year, social services workers investigated injuries on the child, some serious, but did not remove her.

Faced with similar cases, Congress last year passed a law that declares child safety paramount in abuse and neglect cases. Florida followed suit with a law that took effect Oct. 1.

But as the state cracks down on abusive and neglectful parents, the social services agency is struggling to keep up. Broward County has seen the number of children in its care grow by 400 in a year.

"We're serving that many more kids with the same amount of money," Ritz said.

In many parts of Florida, children are being crammed into crowded foster homes. In Broward, a federal lawsuit has been filed on behalf of children who have been hurt in unsafe, crowded foster homes.

In Miami-Dade, 12 percent of the foster homes are "seriously overcrowded" with as many as eight or nine children, Bock said.

Bock and others predict the state will continue removing more children from their families, which will only add strain to the system.

Gov.-elect Jeb Bush has vowed to make child protection a priority. He also has acknowledged that the system needs more money.

Broward social services chief Johnny Brown thinks money is the key to easing the burden. His caseworkers are carrying three times the recommended caseloads, and Brown has estimated that he needs 500 more foster homes to adequately care for the children in state custody.

Brown makes the analogy of a car in need of repair.

"I don't care how good your mechanic is," he said, "if he doesn't have the money to buy the parts, the car isn't going to run right."